10th anniversary of our new building
As we celebrated the 10th anniversary we had quite a time. It is remarkable that a congregational church of Maine has a Phoenix like revival after so many years. It had federated with the Baptist church for many years. For a few of those years it held summer meetings in its old house of worship on the north side of town but in the 40s even that burned down. For many years the federated relationship was a happy one–Cecil Jones, the pastor for 20 years said you looked out on the congregation and couldn’t tell who were Baptists and who were Congregationalists. And many of those years were very productive, I have heard stories of 100 attending a two week vacation Bible School or of great youth groups. At some point in the 1990s a toxic personality drove many of the congregationalists out of the church. What we celebrated on Sunday September 24 was the fact that these people pulled their congregational selves together and in a couple of years had a going church. Amazing.
This only begins to tell the story. As we celebrated we did some math. Of those who remain who originally decided to build, one of them is almost 99 years of age, one is almost 98, only one is young enough to be still in her late 70s. Doing some subtraction we discovered that the group of 14 were seniors, even by senior citizen standards. It is also clear that when they voted to build that many of them had no idea that sitting in a safe deposit box was a little nest egg that would help them realize their dream. This was an act of faith–and if you talk with Dwight Newman about it he will tell you that that is exactly what it was–an act of faith.
Most people are like some flowers, they have but one blooming. We have the course of our life and our accomplishments come in the 20 or thirty years of youth and middle age. But God showed these people that they had another blooming. Their kids may be grown, they may be retired, their health may even be waning, but they still had a magnificent bloom in them–this church and its building. Now many of these people have gone to be with the Lord but think about the heritage that they left.
For this reason I chose as my text Mark 9:23 where Jesus tells another group of people in a discouraging situation. “All things are possible to Him that believes”
September 26 2008 09:45 am | Meeting Times